There are many problems that are difficult to express in general purpose programming languages, but easy to express in application-specific languages, for example:
What AMC does is provide a generic front-end that can be used to construct application-specific languages that generate output in another programming langugage (C for example).
AMC is written in ANSI C and currently runs under POSIX.1 operating systems. It has been tested on the following platforms:
| Hardware | Operating System | Compiler |
|---|---|---|
| AMD K6/2-550 | Linux | gcc |
| Sun SPARCStation 20 | Solaris 2.7 | Sun Forte C |
| HP 710/50 | HP-UX 9.07 | gcc or c89 |
| DEC Alpha/533 | Linux (kernel 2.0.35) | egcs v2.90.29 |
| PowerMac | MkLinux | gcc |
| IBM S/390 | Linux | gcc |
It should work fine "out of the box" on most 32 and 64-bit UNIX-like operating systems. On 16-bit operating systems, the number and size of modules that AMC can process might be limited.
Support for the NeXT has been dropped. It seems that my version of NeXT developer has a bug that doesn't allow strftime to work with other POSIX.1 functions. It is too much of a pain to hack the build scripts to get around this. Sorry.
Sadly, this means that AMC releases take forever, espcially given that I am so busy at work coding there (honestly, after programming all day, going home and doing more doesn't seem much like "fun" anymore).
Currently, AMC is in its third major incarnation. The first version was rather primitive (but many people seem to download it). Version 2 was never released to the public (a few friends were given copies though).
Based on suggestions from my friends, I rewrote the back-end and that was the genesis for V3.0 of AMC. I am hoping the architecture won't change much anymore and people can get some really productive work out of AMC.
I would love to hear comments from people who have used the tool. What you liked about it, what you didn't like, etc. There is a button on the main page that will send me E-mail.